Elements of Criticism, Volume III.

by Lord Henry Home Kames

As also human passions. Take the following example.

——For Pleasure and Revenge
Have ears more deaf than adders, to the voice
Of any true decision.
Troilus and Cressida, act 2. sc. 4.

Virgil explains fame and its effects by a still greater variety of action[19]. And Shakespear personifies death and its operations in a manner extremely fanciful:

—— Within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if his flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable; and humour’d thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle-walls, and farewell king!
Richard II. act 3. sc. 4.

Not less successfully is life and action given even to sleep:

K. Henry. How many thousands of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O gentle Sleep,
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eye-lids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, Sleep, ly’st thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hush’d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber;
Than in the perfum’d chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lull’d with sounds of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why ly’st thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leav’st the kingly couch,
A watch-case to a common larum-bell?
Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast,
Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge;
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deaf’ning clamours in the slipp’ry shrouds,
That, with the hurly, Death itself awakes:
Can’st thou, O partial Sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And, in the calmest and the stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy low! lie down;
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
Second Part Henry IV. act 3. sc. 1.

I shall add one example more, to show that descriptive personification may be used with propriety, even where the purpose of the discourse is instruction merely:

Oh! let the steps of youth be cautious,
How they advance into a dangerous world;
Our duty only can conduct us safe:
Our passions are seducers: but of all,
The strongest Love: he first approaches us,
In childish play, wantoning in our walks:
If heedlessly we wander after him,
As he will pick out all the dancing way,
We’re lost, and hardly to return again.
We should take warning: he is painted blind,
To show us, if we fondly follow him,
The precipices we may fall into.
Therefore let Virtue take him by the hand:
Directed so, he leads to certain joy.
Southern.

Hitherto our progress has been upon firm ground. Whether we shall be so lucky in the remaining part of the journey, seems doubtful. For after acquiring some knowledge of the subject, when we now look back to the expressions mentioned in the beginning, thirsty ground, furious dart, and such like, it seems as difficult as at first to say what sort of personification it is. Such expressions evidently raise not the slighted conviction of sensibility. Nor do I think they amount to descriptive personification: in the expressions mentioned, we do not so much as figure the ground or the dart to be animated; and if so, they cannot at all come under the present subject. And to show this more clearly, I shall endeavour to explain what effect such expressions have naturally upon the mind. In the expression angry ocean, for example, do we not tacitly compare the ocean in a storm, to a man in wrath? It is by this tacit comparison, that the expression acquires a force or elevation, beyond what is found when an epithet is used proper to the object: for I have had occasion to show[20], that a thing inanimate acquires a certain elevation by being compared to a sensible being. And this very comparison is itself a demonstration, that there is no personification in such expressions. For, by the very nature of a comparison, the things compared are kept distinct, and the native appearance of each is preserved. It will be shown afterward, that expressions of this kind belong to another figure, which I term a figure of speech, and which employs the seventh section of the present chapter.

Though thus in general we can precisely distinguish descriptive personification from what is merely a figure of speech, it is however often difficult to say, with respect to some expressions, whether they are of the one kind or of the other. Take the following instances.